The death of a meme

From: hingh@xs4all.nl (Kurt Cobain)
Newsgroups: alt.society.neutopia,alt.memetics
Subject: the  d e a t h  of  a  meme
Date: 1 Feb 1995 08:19:20 GMT


Biological phenotypes _die_ when they are no longer needed for the
replication of the genotype.

A memetic phenotype, i.e. an individual's implementation of a meme, can --
in principle -- continue to replicate for as long as the brain it lives in
is functioning.

But unlike its biological counterpart, the memetic organism _changes_ the
information it passes on to other brains through time, as the individual 
develops her ideas and opinions.

This means that the longer a meme has been living in a brain, the less
accurately its original structure is replicated.

There comes a moment that propagating the mutated version becomes a threat
to the replicative success of the (original) meme itself.
Every well-evolved meme must anticipate this danger, preferably by stopping
the host from spreading any bad mutations.

The most likely strategy is to force a sudden loss of interest in the
field the meme belongs to, when the ideas held by the host differ to much
from the ideas held by other hosts of the same meme.

This strategy can operate through an external 'social pressure', or from
within, as an intrinsic quality of the memetic content.


Remember that radical ideology you used to have?  You tried to develop your
own version, a little more moderate and reasonable.  But whilst you were
looking for the perfect compromise, you suddenly gave up the whole thing.

Just to protect itself, the meme committed suicide.

					       http://www.xs4all.nl/~hingh/

Subject: Re: the d e a t h of a meme
From: pockling@kits.sfu.ca (richard pocklington)

dbennett@crl.com (Andrea Chen) writes:

>hingh@xs4all.nl (Kurt Cobain) writes:

>This raises some crucial issues in how we are defining "memes" or "glassbeads".
>Our treatment is based on a certain degree of fuzziness.  Is the bead
>a piece of information or the turning of that information into an
>active structure which interacts with the environment?  Or both and/or
>a hybrid.

We need to distinguish memeotype from phenotype.
Memeotype, analagous to genotype, is the underlying information
structure, while phenotype is exactly the same as the phenotype we
refer to in traditional evolutionary biology.  This results in the   
production of the 'shared phenotype' problem. (Dawkins 'Extended Phenotype')

>>But unlike its biological counterpart, the memetic organism _changes_ the
>>information it passes on to other brains through time, as the individual
>>develops her ideas and opinions.

NO NO NO this is completely wrong!!!!!!
First of all, what the hell do you mean by memetic organism????
(This is an interesting problem, few have attempted defining 'co-adapted
meme complexes' in any meaningful way)
What individual are you talking abpout?  The host organism???
The definition of meme (Dawkins 1976) will follow to clear up this 
problem, you have introduced a Lamarkian step (which may exist, but only
at the level of meem complexes, NOT at memes, if you use Dawkin's defn)

>I think this also points to the need for further definition.  I view memes
>as individual "atoms", but also combinations of these into complex networks.
>As for the information changing,  we actually have a wide variety of
>behaviors.	Formal logics are for all practical purposes very reliable
>in transmission.  2 + 2 is 4 (base 5 and above) no matter what mind or
>method of calculation (eg. computer or human).

Unfortunately, you are confused here.
Memes are not 'atoms' they are :
SELF-REPLICATING UNITS OF SOCIALLY TRANSMITTED INFORMATION THAT 
PERSIST WITH HIGH FIDELITY.
(and this is one of them, shame on you for misinterpreting the meme, meme)
There are obviously larger constructs, they should not be called memes
unless we want memetics to be a horribly confused garble of pseudoscience.
I would also like to add the caveat that medium independance is a putative
criterion for memeship (ie it's got to be the 'same' meme wheather it
is written, said, sung, televised etc... the INFORMATION content must be the 
SAME).



>I should note that the neu neu topian approach tends to discourage
>the attribution of motives to memes themselves

If you don't follow this VERY IMPORTANT point, I think you have left
memetics and joined some strange cult, for never has any reasonable 
memeticist been so silly as to assume that memes (or genes) have the
qualities we would refer to as motives or conciousness or intent.

MEMES MAKE UP CONCIOUSNESS, THEY DO NOT HAVE CONCIOUSNESS 
a meme spawned by D Dennett
..
They are the fundamental information patterns that provke such 
things in human minds.  We have motives, they 'provoke' motives.
This is an absolutely essential point.  Mary Midgely (a silly philosopher)
Mhas repeatedly tried to deny emtics, and the sel;fish gene thesis
in general, on the basis that genes don't have motivations.  Well no
one with any sense ever said that they did, they just are easily modelled
as if they did because they are responsibl;e (in part) for the production
of such feelings, and our capacity to sense such things is likely an ad-
aptation to worm our way through a social environment full of hostile
meme/gene strategies.    


--
Richard Pocklington,               :Origin of man now proved.-Metaphysics must  
Behavioural Ecology Research Group :flourish.-He who understands baboon would  
SFU, BC, Canada.  pockling@sfu.ca  :do more toward metaphysics than Locke. 
                                    Charles Darwin, M notebook 1838

Subject: Re: the d e a t h of a meme
From: dbennett@crl.com (Andrea Chen)

pockling@kits.sfu.ca (richard pocklington) writes:

>dbennett@crl.com (Andrea Chen) writes:


>Unfortunately, you are confused here.
>Memes are not 'atoms' they are :
>SELF-REPLICATING UNITS OF SOCIALLY TRANSMITTED INFORMATION THAT
>PERSIST WITH HIGH FIDELITY.

This points to differences in our approaches.  (which is whu we use
the term glassbead rather than meme with an admittedly loose usage
of the latter).

For those with no background in actually making information structures
(self replicating) or mutating, "atom" is a term for a basic unit of
information (indivisible) used in McCarthys tree (hierarchial) logic
which evolved into modern Lisp.  It is also a basic unit in Codds two
dimensional set logic (relational).  

The set with which we neu neu topians wish to deal includes more
than "social transmission" since computer based mechanisms are a
useful area of study.	"Self replicating" implies function mixed
"information".  At this point in addition to structural forms
(trees, networks, sets),  we must include active cyberentic logics
such as feedback.  The reductionist method requires that we sometimes
separate the two.



>(and this is one of them, shame on you for misinterpreting the meme, meme)
>There are obviously larger constructs, they should not be called memes
>unless we want memetics to be a horribly confused garble of pseudoscience.


Lets face facts,  the whole field is currently pseudo science.  You have
already stated a meme is self replicating meaning that in theory it
can be broken into Shannonian information (passive data without "meaning")
and into a "language" akin to what we program our computers with (which
can also be measured with Shannonian "information entrophy").  Previously
you denied the existence of an "atom",  now you say we have an indivisible
unit.  I would tend to deny the absolute reality of the atom because using
the anaology of the dictionary (the closest thing we have to a complete
"meme map") the whole thing is recursive with each piece being pointed
to by other pieces. We have some exceedingly complex logical structures
here,  but in the past half century we have gone a long way towards
formalizing them.  You are taking a word (eg. meme) giving it some
absolute value while the neu neu topian movement argues that we can
actually model the constructs.  We have a difference in approach here.
Ours is based on things like "systems theory".  Yours tries to avoid
the "garble" by making absolutist statements.  You are satisfied with
the surface of the word while we are trying to edge into the underlying
nature of semantics.  Possible biological constructs such as Chomskys
"universal grammar" and other logics intrinsic in "order".


>I would also like to add the caveat that medium independance is a putative
>criterion for memeship (ie it's got to be the 'same' meme wheather it
>is written, said, sung, televised etc... the INFORMATION content must be the
>SAME).

This is going to lead to a number of problems.  As I stated in an earlier
post we have formal logics which provide consistent meaning no matter
what,  beyond this (written, sung, televised) there is a great deal
of variation in how information is processed and the information content
is rarely the same.  It differs in numerous ways from individual to
individual.  





>>I should note that the neu neu topian approach tends to discourage
>>the attribution of motives to memes themselves

>If you don't follow this VERY IMPORTANT point, I think you have left
>memetics and joined some strange cult, for never has any reasonable
>memeticist been so silly as to assume that memes (or genes) have the
>qualities we would refer to as motives or conciousness or intent.

First there is a contradiction in your statements.  Earlier you said
self replicating which employs like all biological beings they have
some "intent" to propagate themselves.  At this point we can argue
definitions.  But the simple fact of the matter is that most words
have multiple definitions.  From an AI approach there is often valid
reason to work with minimalist definitions of various mental events. 
We cluster a few simple, formal behaviors around a word with a much
richer meaning in hopes of building this pieces into a more elaborate
complex.  For many words (and one suspects "memes"), a complete definition
is impossible.  We put together partial definitions and feelings and
arrive at something which is good enough. On the subject of memes
many find metaphor useful. Words like "purpose" focus our minds is
certain ways and that focus can be useful.  There are two responses
to this.  One is deny things like "consciousness" to such contructs
and this is a useful reminder because of peoples ability to get
hypnotized by words (such as "memes").  The other is pragmatic, one
ignores violations of purist usage and tries to get to the underlying
ideas.  The caveats are useful,  but they result in an endless loop.
Many serious scientists anthromorphize to one degree or another.  It
is the nature of how we approach things.    


>MEMES MAKE UP CONCIOUSNESS, THEY DO NOT HAVE CONCIOUSNESS

This is a nice slogan and there is probaly something to it.  But it
making all kinds of assumptions about the nature of consciousness.
There are problems of separating the two.  Also if I throw a whole
bunch of memes into a computer can I "make" consciousness?

>They are the fundamental information patterns that provke such
>things in human minds.  We have motives, they 'provoke' motives.
>This is an absolutely essential point.  Mary Midgely (a silly philosopher)
>Mhas repeatedly tried to deny emtics, and the sel;fish gene thesis
>in general, on the basis that genes don't have motivations.  Well no
>one with any sense ever said that they did, they just are easily modelled
>as if they did because they are responsibl;e (in part) for the production
>of such feelings, and our capacity to sense such things is likely an ad-
>aptation to worm our way through a social environment full of hostile
>meme/gene strategies.

"Fundamental information patterns".  This is a subject which interests
me.  I know how to build some fundamental information patterns.  I
can build them abstractly and put them in a computer.  Give me the code
for some memes.  Otherwise you are just using fancy sounding words.

"Selfish" genes is the same sort of anthromorphizing that you were
attributing to "strange cults" a while back.

"Easily modeled".  Some behaviors are easily modeled.  Von Neumann gane
theory is an example.  Dawkins provides some other strategies,  but
numerous others are possible.  Our most elaborate models are so
crude and those who try to build such models typically have a few
breakthroughs and then crawl along.  Linking their models with other
models is often difficult.  

I'm afraid you have read a few books.  It all sounds so simple and
the words resound with an authorative clap.  The result is illusion.
You are venturing into a vast, perhaps infinite study, the nature of
meaning,  numerous systems interactions including the fundamental
structure of the brain and the behaviors of society.  None of these
things can be separated from "memes".  It is not a closed system
you are dealing with.  It ties into so many things,  the concepts
and vocabularies of many disciplines must be borrowed and roughly
made consistent.  The whole thing is in a stage of pre science.
There are formal logics which work,  but poetry is at times of
more value,  there are useful things to observe,  but hypothesis
are still so limited that we are missing all kinds of evidence before
our eyes because we don't know where to look for it.

We neu neu topians are using Internet as a lab for our experiments.
We are getting a feel for some things,  we even have some classifications.
There have been successful predictions (according to Popper the essence
of real science),  but for the most part it is still blundering and
feeling our way. 

You make it sound so easy,  you act as though the problem is solved.
I think this is an example of an interesting "meme behavior".
Authorative sounding words are used to paint a plausible surface
and the surface prevents the examination of the awesome mystery
which is meaning.  It is "memes" erecting a camauflage which prevents
us from going down and dissecting them.  

    - Doctress Chen -


Your sig is an interesting piece of code.  The fact that you repeated
it twice might lead some psychologists to less than flattering
conclusions.  This incidently is a part of "meme studies" since
redundancy is an important tool in communication (of which meme
study is a class or perhaps according to you meme study is the
super class and communication the subset though of course it
depends on your definition of "communication" this leading to the
complex information linkages and structures which compose the
real world and which are not "easily modeled").


>--
>Richard Pocklington,	       :Origin of man now proved.-Metaphysics must
>Behavioural Ecology Research Group :flourish.-He who understands baboon would
>SFU, BC, Canada.  pockling@sfu.ca  :do more toward metaphysics than Locke.
>					Charles Darwin, M notebook 1838
>--
>Richard Pocklington,	       :Origin of man now proved.-Metaphysics must
>Behavioural Ecology Research Group :flourish.-He who understands baboon would
>SFU, BC, Canada.  pockling@sfu.ca  :do more toward metaphysics than Locke.
>					Charles Darwin, M notebook 1838

Subject: Re: the d e a t h of a meme
From: pockling@kits.sfu.ca (richard pocklington)

dbennett@crl.com (Andrea Chen) writes:

>pockling@kits.sfu.ca (richard pocklington) writes:

>>dbennett@crl.com (Andrea Chen) writes:

                          MEMES ARE:
>>SELF-REPLICATING UNITS OF SOCIALLY TRANSMITTED INFORMATION THAT
>>	       PERSIST WITH HIGH FIDELITY.

>This points to differences in our approaches.  (which is whu we use
>the term glassbead rather than meme with an admittedly loose usage
>of the latter).

it is this loose useage which i question.
If we wish to be able to have a reasonable discussion of 'memes' then
we need a codified definition over which we agree, fuzzy concepts make 
discussions more difficult in my opinion.

I see again and again the very sloppy use of the word meme to mean
either a small piece of high fidelity info like a word,  (I am not
interested at this point in getting into the shannon weaver THEORY of
information which may or may not be relevant to this argument) or
some larger structure such as 'xtianity'.  I find it  unlikely that 
a definition which is so broad to encompass both theese things will
be a practically useful term.

I support the above definition of meme because it allows a preliminary stab
at the cutting up of cultural information into replicative units.

My favorite example this week is the saying:

IF YOU LEAVE YOUR MIND OPEN, SOMEONE WILL THROW GARBAGE INTO IT.

I think that this kind of statement counts as a meme (tentatively).
It is a successful replicator, (I expect all of you reading this are 
familiar with it), it maintains infromation continuity regardless of
the media, (you might have heard it on television as well as on the net 
and it is the 'same' meme) and it has a very interesting effect on the 
behaviour of the host organism.  It provokes skepticism.  In short  I 
think that the above statement (paraphrased any way you like) is a 
prime example of an interesting study meme. 

 It plays on a few buttons,
including the mind open metaphor as well as the tendency of others to
exploit you and the odious nature of other peoples garbage.  All of
these concepts are likely tied directly to instinctual responses.
The meme itself has some 'self protecting' qualities as the information
it contaions is likely to stick tenaciously to the inside of your head
and along with your innate tendency to tell other people what is good
for them it actively propagates itself into new hosts through the
means of 'friendly advice' (behavioural manipulation of socially close
individuals through the use of a trust link which allows you to send in
great friggin big trojan horses), this advice most often being given
when a friend has expresed interwst in a flaky philosophy (like colon
cleaning with yogurt or some other wierd meme that potentially leaves
you vulnerable to serious infection by the 'new friends' you might meet 
when you go to the colon sessions).

>>MEMES MAKE UP CONCIOUSNESS, THEY DO NOT HAVE CONCIOUSNESS
 
-- 
Richard Pocklington,               :Origin of man now proved.-Metaphysics must  
Behavioural Ecology Research Group :flourish.-He who understands baboon would  
SFU, BC, Canada.  pockling@sfu.ca  :do more toward metaphysics than Locke. 
                                    Charles Darwin, M notebook 1838

Subject: Re: the d e a t h of a meme
From: dbennett@crl.com (Andrea Chen)

pockling@kits.sfu.ca (richard pocklington) writes:


>>This points to differences in our approaches.  (which is whu we use
>>the term glassbead rather than meme with an admittedly loose usage
>>of the latter).

>it is this loose useage which i question.

This is a topdown approach, it proceeds from the general to the more
specific.  It is a well accepted method of problem solving and one
of many used in "science".

>If we wish to be able to have a reasonable discussion of 'memes' then
>we need a codified definition over which we agree, fuzzy concepts make
>discussions more difficult in my opinion.

I am quite willing to listen to any codified approach,  there are in
fact a number of "universal" logics (Turing machines, Von Neumann
machines (such as we are all using right now) and a number of higher
level) forms which can (in theory) model any completely defined
concept.  Anything which we can't express in these terms is at
least in part "fuzzy".


>I see again and again the very sloppy use of the word meme to mean
>either a small piece of high fidelity info like a word,  (I am not
>interested at this point in getting into the shannon weaver THEORY of
>information which may or may not be relevant to this argument) or
>some larger structure such as 'xtianity'.  I find it  unlikely that
>a definition which is so broad to encompass both theese things will
>be a practically useful term.

I'm not sure if most words have "high fidelity".  Depends on the word
and what you mean by high fidelity.

Shannon does provide a basic mathematical precision including means
of measurement though those can get fuzzy as soon as you throw logics
rather than passive, meaningless "pure" information into the equation.

We do need terms to embrace a wide range of information states from
the precise to the general.  We have a word called "biology" which
refers to an exceedingly large structure and specific terms such
as Monadian operons (a logic with 3 parts).  There are layers and
levels of approaches.



>IF YOU LEAVE YOUR MIND OPEN, SOMEONE WILL THROW GARBAGE INTO IT.

>I think that this kind of statement counts as a meme (tentatively).
>It is a successful replicator, (I expect all of you reading this are
>familiar with it), it maintains infromation continuity regardless of
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Subject: Re: the d e a t h of a meme
From: Richard Pocklington <pockling@sfu.ca>


>dbennett@crl.com (Andrea Chen) wrote:

>> pockling@kits.sfu.ca (richard pocklington) writes:

>>			 MEMES ARE:
>>SELF-REPLICATING UNITS OF SOCIALLY TRANSMITTED INFORMATION THAT
>>	       PERSIST WITH HIGH FIDELITY.

>>I see again and again the very sloppy use of the word meme to mean
>>either a small piece of high fidelity info like a word or
>>some larger structure such as 'xtianity'.  I find it unlikely that
>>a definition which is so broad to encompass both these things will
>>be a practically useful term.

> what you mean by high fidelity.

I argue that the high fidelity is the result of memetic evolution.
By natural selection, of course ;) 
If you sample the meme population, I would make the simple
prediction that the older the meme the higher the fidelity (ceteris
paribus, all else being equal).

I expect that this is true because if the fidelity of the meme is
low there will be few copies of 'it' around and any copies that have
slight advantages in transmission fidelity will have advantages that
will be sorted through the process of exponential replication.

High fidelity memes are also the ones which I think spread effectively
through a large number of situations which involve the adoption of a
new meme into a group of hosts, thus if they are 'floppy' they do not
survive the recombination event and thus get smashed up, never to
become very popular.

This meme ^^^ is hijacked directly from the fundamental theorum of 
genetic algorithms (I got it from Goldberg 1989), although Dawkins
used it to define memes himself.

The more important selection is in sculpting the memes we observe,
the more important the fidelity condition will be.  If neutral
drift is important, fidelity might be expected to be important on
some levels, but we would not expect any 'strong force' to be
sculpting memes into high fidelity packets of info.

Literature Cited:
Goldberg DE 1989  "Genetic Algorithms in Search, Optimization, and
Machine Learning"	Addison-Wesley.

I encourage all interested to use the citation fashion common to 
in print science, it will help others know where you are coming
from... of course hypertext links are preferrable (but I have no clue
how to stick one in a news post)

From: glass@xmission.xmission.com (Glass)
Newsgroups: alt.cyberspace,alt.society.neutopia,alt.memetics,alt.postmodern
Subject: Re: the d e a t h of a meme
Date: 14 Feb 1995 22:23:06 -0700

In article <pockling.792791834@sfu.ca>, richard pocklington
<pockling@kits.sfu.ca> wrote:

>dbennett@crl.com (Andrea Chen) writes:

>>Lets face facts,  the whole field is currently pseudo science.
>Memetics as practiced on this newsgroup is mostly garbage, true, but
>there is a growing field of academic memetics which has the science
>methedology meme firmly entrenched and WE WILL NOT BE SWAYED BY RHETORIC.
>
>We are the scientists and all the fancy prose in the world can be blown away
>by a simple (or not so simple) experiment.
>We are those who posess the one meme that does allow us to interact
>with the substratum of reality upon which all meme constructs mustr grow.
>For as we delve into the NATURAL world we find secrets that your mere words
>can never touch.

In re the "one meme that allows us....", I would like to recall in public
that the immediate ancestors of "memetics" are found not only in
scientistic information theory but also in the less systematic pursuits of
semiotics (whence -eme: phoneme, morpheme, et al), psychoanalysis,
anthropology, and literary theory.  The study of the word in itself. 

Also, I question whether delving into any sur-linguistic world (whether 
possible or not) is of any help in getting in touch with the -meme-, 
which is what we are talking about here.  Understanding of fish does not 
necessarily entail understanding of birds.

Does the meme exist on the level of "natural," pre-linguistic experience,
or is it a creature of the social, linguistic world?

If the latter, perhaps the poets and symbol-pushers may have their own 
(dare I say "emic") insight as to how this familiar creature behaves in
its own environment, and how it speaks in its own voice.

If the former, then I read you as a gnostic, and approve.  There are 
Secrets that cannot be represented in language, empiric Truths that 
cannot be coded by words, yes?

To be cryptic, perhaps we are dealing with "memetics" (from the
anthropological "-etics" of classification -from afar-) as a science and
"mememics" (from "-emics," classification -from within-) as an
interpretive art. 

In Neutopia, Glass

From: brock@ssl.msfc.nasa.gov
Newsgroups: alt.cyberspace,alt.society.neutopia,alt.memetics
Subject: Re: the d e a t h of a meme
Date: 17 Feb 1995 23:07:16 GMT

>If you doubt the power of science to make permenant changes in the
>way we perceive and interact through the achievement of 'accurate'
>models of the 'underlying substarte of reality" then I fear we have lost
>you and your ideology is doomed to eventually fade from view as an interesting
>piece of data on FAILED MEMES, for if you are not with the absolutley
>most POWERFUL memes that do exist, those of rational inquiry and careful
>experimentation, then you are lost and will become no more than data for our
>comparative studies.

I don't doubt the power of science, but a walk down almost any street
convinces me that rational inquiry is hardly the most powerful of memes,
if it may be called a meme.  My meme pool is in the heart of the Bible belt,
and we have a church on practically every street corner.

Pure rationality lacks a motivational component.  It tells me what to
believe, but it doesn't tell me how to behave.  The commandment "teach
your children well to be skeptics" is not rational.  One can speak of such
a commandment as rationally consistent with some set of rules governing
behavior (an ethics), but I don't see how you could call the commandment
"rational" in any objective sense.

One could argue for the objective truth of a statement like "teaching children
to be rational is best for them", but not without defining "best".  If one
defines "best" in terms of the child's happiness, mental and emotional well
being, or fitness to thrive in some society, I'm not even sure the statement
is true.  I am hopeless infected with rationality myself, mind you.

There are ethical systems (meme complexes, here) which include and promote
the scientific method, humanism for example, but those systems are not
themselves rational, nor are they nearly as successful at replicating as meme
complexes like Mormonism, just to pick one.  One can develop a very skewed
perspective living in an academic environment.

From: leeb@zeta.org.au (Lee Borkman)
Newsgroups: alt.cyberspace,alt.society.neutopia,alt.memetics
Subject: Re: the d e a t h of a meme
Date: 18 Feb 1995 14:05:16 +1100

richard pocklington (pockling@kits.sfu.ca) wrote:

: >hingh@xs4all.nl (Kurt Cobain) writes:

: >>But unlike its biological counterpart, the memetic organism _changes_ the
: >>information it passes on to other brains through time, as the individual
: >>develops her ideas and opinions.

: NO NO NO this is completely wrong!!!!!!
: The definition of meme (Dawkins 1976) will follow to clear up this 
: problem, you have introduced a Lamarkian step (which may exist, but only
: at the level of meem complexes, NOT at memes, if you use Dawkin's defn)

: Memes are not 'atoms' they are :
: SELF-REPLICATING UNITS OF SOCIALLY TRANSMITTED INFORMATION THAT 
: PERSIST WITH HIGH FIDELITY.

I think you are interpreting "persists with hi fidelity" too strictly.
If you insist that this means memes do not change during the period in 
which they reside within the host, then you clearly disqualify many 
things (melodies, for example) from being memes.  There is no doubt that 
Dawkins intended melodies to be memes, rather than meme complexes.

I take "persists with high fidelity" to mean that the meme is easily
recognizable as a variation on the original.

There IS an alternative which I prefer, however.  Rather than defining
meme reproduction as ocurring only at the point of transmission, we can
allow that memes reproduce and compete WITHIN the host's mind (which seems
self-evident).  So someone transmits a meme to me.  Within the mental
environment of my mind, amid all the surrounding memes, that meme
(possibly in combination with others) produces some offspring, which are
variants of that meme.  These variants now compete with each other and
with all my other memes for space within my mind.  Eventually I transmit
one of these to someone else.  There is no reason to believe that the 
meme I transmit will be the same one that I received, yet the meme I 
receive remains unchanged throughout the process, although it may, of 
course, be extinct within this particular host.

So there are 2 choices.  Allow Lamarckian change, but retain transmission 
as the only point of reproduction.  OR - Keep individual memes immutable, 
but allow that reproduction occurs within the mind of the host (at a much 
higher rate than the rate of transmission).

If you choose to disallow Lamarckian change in memes, AND insist that 
reproduction only occur at the point of transmission, then I would claim 
that we have an uninteresting, pointless web of definitions, that 
excludes all of those ideas which we would like to consider as memes.  


Please - your thoughts?

Lee Borkman. 

From: brock@ssl.msfc.nasa.gov
Newsgroups: alt.cyberspace,alt.society.neutopia,alt.memetics,alt.postmodern
Subject: Re: the d e a t h of a meme
Date: 17 Feb 1995 23:23:38 GMT

>In re the "one meme that allows us....", I would like to recall in public
>that the immediate ancestors of "memetics" are found not only in
>scientistic information theory but also in the less systematic pursuits of
>semiotics (whence -eme: phoneme, morpheme, et al), psychoanalysis,
>anthropology, and literary theory.	The study of the word in itself.

I would add comparative religion and formal logic.

>If the former, then I read you as a gnostic, and approve.  There are
>Secrets that cannot be represented in language, empiric Truths that
>cannot be coded by words, yes?

Ironically, your gnosticism can be formally proven in the language of
symbolic logic (the incompleteness theorem).

From: Richard Pocklington <pockling@sfu.ca>
Newsgroups: alt.cyberspace,alt.society.neutopia,alt.memetics,alt.postmodern
Subject: Re: the d e a t h of a meme
Date: 17 Feb 1995 23:42:45 GMT

glass@xmission.xmission.com (Glass) wrote:
 
>Does the meme exist on the level of "natural," pre-linguistic experience,
>or is it a creature of the social, linguistic world?

I am not sure i understand your question, please elaborate.

>If the latter, perhaps the poets and symbol-pushers may have their own
>(dare I say "emic") insight as to how this familiar creature behaves in
>its own environment, and how it speaks in its own voice.

There is of course a tremendous problem with the use of scientific
frameworks to understand problems that have 'folk' explanations.
First, we may be genetically (or memetically) programmed to get the
answer, approximately, through some sort of rule of thumb.  This
insight may blind us to the more rigorous approach that computational
models allow.  I do not deny the -emic, I merely place that kind
of knowledge into the category of experience that I am interested in
explaining, not to be used as an analytical tool itself.
>To be cryptic, perhaps we are dealing with "memetics" (from the
>anthropological "-etics" of classification -from afar-) as a science and
>"mememics" (from "-emics," classification -from within-) as an
>interpretive art.

OK, have mememics.  I do hope you enjoy it.
However I do believe that it is important to go beyond the -emic insight
and to take the knowledge that we can glean with our senses (however we
must use technological and cognitive prostheses often times) and apply
the logical methodologies developed in the study of countless other
fields .  There is a great movement away from scientific types of
analysis and into what i consider a big honking deconstructiuonist mess.

I don't want to study mememics, in fact I am not sure I want to study
memetics, I argue that it will be the study of MEMEOLOGY. (the logical
 study of memes) that will pays off dividends in understanding (prediction
of patterns of memetic phenomena).

From: Richard Pocklington <pockling@sfu.ca>
Newsgroups: alt.cyberspace,alt.society.neutopia,alt.memetics
Subject: What is a Meme
Date: 21 Feb 1995 17:23:56 GMT

leeb@zeta.org.au (Lee Borkman) wrote:
>
> richard pocklington (pockling@kits.sfu.ca) wrote:

>			    Memes are:
>  SELF-REPLICATING UNITS OF SOCIALLY TRANSMITTED INFORMATION THAT
>		     PERSIST WITH HIGH FIDELITY.
>
> I think you are interpreting "persists with hi fidelity" too strictly.
I fully admit that what 'high fidelity' means is oepn to question.

> There IS an alternative which I prefer, however.  Rather than defining
> meme reproduction as ocurring only at the point of transmission, we can
> allow that memes reproduce and compete WITHIN the host's mind (which seems
> self-evident).  So someone transmits a meme to me.  Within the mental
> environment of my mind, amid all the surrounding memes, that meme
> (possibly in combination with others) produces some offspring, which are
> variants of that meme.  These variants now compete with each other and
> with all my other memes for space within my mind.	Eventually I transmit
> one of these to someone else.

Yes.
This is exactly what I was trying to get at.  However I stay with my 
high fidelity meme definition, with a clairification to what I meant
by fidelity.  I argue that the above process (transmission, 
within mind processes, transmission) is pretty rough on 'ideas'
in general.  

What makes them memes is that they survive this process
intact.  Thus after a good amount of time, don't we expect that the
meme pool shoudl be full of high fidelity bits?  any low fi memes 
(yes, I am partially caving in here) get eliminated, or at best
pop up at something like the 'mutation' frequency, while hi fi memes
persit and persits and multiply and make evryone go on and act out 
their appropriate phenotpyes.

Now this  does not mean that the phenotypes will have to be exactly
the same each time (the tune might vary in key, for example, or the
melody might be spead up a bit), I still claim that it is the SAME
meme even though the phenotype is modified (due to the 'environment').

Thus there might be two polarized memetic 'strategies', the first 
being small tight ideas which have internalized cohesiveness, ie they
are very much like 'atoms' (words may be in this category).
Alternately they may have a genral patern in which there is much slop
(perhaps the 'god' meme is a prime example) and thus despite their
occurances in a diverse array of environemnts, the meme itself
is intact, if labile in phenotype.  (i am not assuming here that all
concepts of deity are one meme, although they might be).